Maya, Max and Blender writers luau at SIGGRAPH
Tony Mullen and Roland Hess were invited to the Wiley & Sons Author Dinner at SIGGRAPH.
Hi Bart,
I thought your readers might get a kick out of seeing this post on Lee Lanier’s blog site.
Scroll down to the Wiley & Sons Author Dinner entry to see me and Roland Hess (technical editor for Introducing Character Animation with Blender) having dinner with several editors, marketers, and authors for Sybex/Wiley during the Siggraph conference. That’s us, second and third from the right. The other authors present include Eric Keller, author of Maya Visual Effects: The Innovator’s Guide; Kelly Murdock,co-author of Edgeloop Character Modeling For 3D Professionals Only (which actually looks like it might be very useful for Blender artists to check out as well, even though it’s intended for a Max audience); Lee Lanier, author of Advanced Maya Texturing and Lighting and Maya Professional Tips and Techniques; and George Maestri, furthest right, author of Maya at a Glance and the classic set of Digital Character Animation Volumes 1, 2, and 3. (George was also the original animation producer of South Park, among his many accomplishments.)
It was a real pleasure for me to spend some time with these experienced CG artists and writers. In addition to being knowledgeable and talented professionals, these folks were also a lot of fun to talk to. And after a little initial ribbing about being the “open source anarchists” of the group, Roland and I found that people’s impressions of Blender were by and large very favorable (although incomplete; throughout the whole Siggraph conference I lost count of the times I heard people say the words “wow, Blender has *that* now, too?!”)
All in all a very good time.
Tony
cool. good to see you had fun.
Very nice. Looks like a good time.
Maybe it’s just me, but Tony really looks like Woody Harrelson in that picture ;-)
Ditto to the Woody Harrelson looka like gotta agree he does
yay….more people realizing that, yes, blender does that too….
Way to go Ton and Blender! More and more are forced, yes forced to acknowledge Blender. Corporations are forced to acknowledge Open Source and they are losing billions of dollars, so don’t trust them.
I think it was Julius Caesar who said…
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”
Yeah – cool stuff! Congrats.
That said though…. I *REALLY* hope we’d
hear “Wow – Blender has THAT tool? We ain’t got that”
rather than “Blender has got that too now?”
In addition to tech editing that Wiley book, I think the Hess dude had something to do with that “Blending Your Essenses” book.
That was a fun night. Lots of good shoptalk and some fun industry rumors. And us Blender guys either got respect, or the other people there were good at hiding their mockery.
Hey hey hey. Maya, Max and Blender developers can sit peacefully at the same table. Why do the Blender USERS get so bristley, then?
Ah, nice :D
@ Black Boe:
Not every Blender User looses his peace, when talking to (or about) Users of any other 3D app…
And most times, users explode, when Blender doesn’t get respected, as it should…
Very often, it gets respected, but not as one User wishes, though… That’s not a good point to explode, then.
Sometimes, it’s the other way round, too, btw. (No idea, how often, though)
Where were the houdini dudes? Maybe too busy with H9. Good to see the evening was fun. Everyone has something to learn from each other. nice to hear that they’re able to confab about various things the rest of us are interested in. AKA glad they didn’t heavily debate the pros and cons of each others business models, tho Max and Maya are now Autodesk property…
I hear ya Harky! ;)
harkyman, doh! Yes, of course Roland Hess, second from right, is best known as the main author and editor of “Essential Blender”, which is now also available on Amazon for pre-order and set to become another Blender bestseller. Apologies for leaving that out.
And yeah, I have heard Woody Harrelson more times than once…
Yay for Blender Nation! I wish I could’ve made it to SIGGRAPH 2007.
I live in San Diego. I had to leave town for 2 weeks for my sister’s
wedding. I hope to see you guys there next year.
bad idea: never speak with other people and make a house for only blender users, speaking only about blender, or saying bad things about all the other tools
good idea: to become friends of everibody, learning and treaching each other, making everibody understand the possibilities of blender, and understanding what the other tools do and why so much people use them
for me is a very good meeting; i don’t think that blender must kill maya or 3ds; i think that blender is another way of thinking and that to sit at the same table with those people is a part of that way of thinking; and if a good programmer got money for his work is good; to put together an open source project is better; but people need money to live; may be in the future we all have “open source” money and food… but so far blender is a little help to change our minds;
sorry for my english; all imho, of course! :-)